Thursday, September 2, 2004

Drafting several necklines this winter and spring has pushed me to try even curvier, faster curves. Step on it, lead foot!

I wasn’t convinced this was going to work – if you look at the picture from yesterday, you can see the narrowness of the shoulder piece. I wanted to use WIDE chunky rib at the neck and that needed a WIDE SCOOPER-Doo…

This means I had to leave a curved *hole* so to speak, that I was going to *fill-up* with rib.

But ya really don’t know until you get your hands (face, feet and NECK) dirty in this PROCESS so in I dived. I picked up 5 sts for every 6 on the edge.

My RULE of THUMB for edgings is thus: note your Row Gauge. Then subract 1 stitch from whatever that number is, so in this case it is 5 because this is an Aran weight yarn with a gauge of 6 rows per inch. I picked up 5 sts for every 6 stitches made along the edge (pick up 5, skip 1, pick up 5, skip 1, etc). This is called a 5/6 ratio.

If your row gauge is 7 rows per inch, pick up 6 sts for every 7 along the edge. For bulky yarns with a row gauge of 4 rows per inch, I pick up stitches in a 3/4 ratio.

The mistake I referred to on Tuesday was that I picked up stitches in a 6/7 ratio or 6 sts for every 7 on the body edge, and ended up with too many stitches. This made the ButtonBand flare out! I could see it in the picture, but didn’t spot it in person! I have no idea why I broke my own THUMB! A BB (and all edgings) need to be slightly smaller than what they are edging so they CONTROL the edge itself.

Dog is in the Details

Other Finishing FUN!

— I always slip the first stitch of the row of a band for a smooth edge

— on the Buttonband, on the last bind-off row, on a RS row, I bind-off all stitches knitwise for a cool, little chain edging on the band. This is firm and controls the roll…

— on the neckline, I started out with needles that were two sizes smaller than the body needles. Half-way through, I switched to three sizes down from the body; on the last two rows, I used a needle 4 sizes down. This gave me a nice sublte curve of its own with no pesky decreasing – which is always hard to do on a ribbed section.